The European Union has launched a €7.5 million (US$10.1
million) project called Trustworthy Clouds (TClouds) to test how cloud
computing could be applied to healthcare to treat patients outside of a
hospital setting.

To demonstrate how healthcare costs can be reduced without
compromising on patients’ privacy, San Raffaele Hospital in Italy will
coordinate with a home healthcare service to care for patients
remotely—monitoring, diagnosing and assisting patients outside of a
hospital setting.

Information from prescription to delivery, intake, and reimbursement
will be stored in the cloud for patients, doctors and pharmacies
to access.

According to the TClouds web site, both industries were chosen for their “social significance”.

Dr Christian Cachin, Cryptographer with IBM
Research Zurich, explained to FutureGov Asia Pacific: “Maintaining
privacy when it comes to your personal medical records is of the utmost
importance to citizens, insurance providers and hospitals, so we thought
this would provide good proof.”

Dr Matthias Schunter, technical leader for the TClouds Project, said
the research wants to show that “the rewards in terms of both cost
efficiencies and smarter services can be achieved by using advanced
cloud technology”.

While the benefits of cloud computing abound, Cachin said that “it is
critical data that many organisations may think twice about keeping in a
cloud. We hope to change that perception.”

To address the security issues, scientists will build an advanced
‘Cloud of Clouds’ framework for the project — providing multiple
back-ups of the TClouds data and applications in case of a hardware
failure or intrusion.

Besides the advanced technology, TClouds will also look into the
legal, social and business aspects of cross-border cloud computing;
write cloud computing service agreements; build open APIs (application
programming interfaces) and secure cloud management components; and,
develop user-centric requirements like languages and accessibility.

Cachin said: “TClouds will add a multi-national European perspective
that is also applicable to the Asia Pacific region. We hope that some
pieces will be able to be reused throughout the world.”

Work started on TClouds in October and is expected to be completed by September 2013.

Among those involved are corporate and public organisations and
academic research institutes including Technikon Research and Planning, IBM, Philips Electronics, Energias de Portugal, EFACEC, San Raffaele Hospital, Technische Universitat Darmstadt, University of Oxford and Politecnico di Torino.

The European Union has launched a €7.5 million US$10.1 million project called Trustworthy Clouds TClouds to test how cloud computing could be applied to healthcare to treat patients outside of a hospital setting